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Guide for Organization Architects

Become the architect of the organization you really want! Learn how to align and integrate your stakeholders, strategy, systems, scorecard, and culture to create sustainable excellence. Whether you are designing and building a new organization, transforming an existing organization, or just redesigning and rebuilding a part of the organization this book will help you become the architect of your organization – an organization that creates …

John Latham, PhD

As an Organization Architect and Founder of the Organization Design Studio™, I help leaders learn how to design, build, and lead organizations that create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders: investors, customers, employees, suppliers and partners, society, and the natural environment. During the last 35+ years, I have enjoyed a wide variety of experiences working in and with commercial, non-profit, …

Free Articles + eBooks

Sign up for a Free Studio Membership, and you’ll have access to the Members Only Free eBook Library. The library currently contains four eBooks totaling over 170 pages - topics include the leadership framework for organization architects, design framework for organization architects, empathy maps, and leading the journey to sustainable excellence (see descriptions below). You also get access to the first two Modules in the Leading Transformation …

Leadership Framework

Successful leaders in the future will have to become architects of enduring organizations by designing systems that create sustainable results for multiple stakeholders (Latham, 2012).
Leading the journey to sustainable excellence requires the flexible combination of leadership activities, behaviors, and individual characteristics that work …

Design Framework

Most organizations are like VCRs blinking 12:00. They are poorly designed, out of date and ill-prepared to survive, let alone thrive, in the modern environment (Latham, 2013).
When one hears the words "design" and "designer" many people think of fashion, or interior design, or maybe the design of everyday items such as glasses, salt shakers, and …

Research Methods Framework

Whether you are working to solve a unique organizational issue or making a contribution to theory, the research methods framework will help you align the "DNA" of your study to deliver the insights that you need. "I use terms like 'canvas' and 'design' because research requires both analytical and creative knowledge, skills, and abilities. There is …

Blog

CHAD - I know you’ve listened to the podcast some, you know I love innovation quotes, so I asked you to bring one too. What’s the quote you have for us?
JOHN - So I had to bring a different one this time, and I thought the one that fit what we were talking about the best was one that I think is attributable to Peter Skillman at IDEO. But I could …

Chad - Like the title of your book, Create the Organization You Want, I see a key benefit is making the organization that you want to work in and everyone else wants to work in too.
WIIFM
John - That’s the "what’s in it really for me,” or WIiFM part right? It’s your opportunity to create the organization you want to work inside of and be a part …

Fewer Fires
I think the first tangible benefit is you have fewer fires to put out. So often we spend much of our executive time putting out fires. Working issues between those silos that got mucked up because we don’t have a well-oiled process or culture to facilitate that work between the different functions. This happens both in one-off …

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Tenacity
One of the biggest issues for success is tenacity. One of the things that we found is that designing organizations is, first of all, never done. So even organizations that come up with a great design and create high performance, if they aren’t building continuous renewal and reinvention and rethinking into their organization design, …

Systems Thinking
The first challenge is developing a systems perspective and understanding dynamic systems. We’ve been talking about this for over 50 years, and yet we still don’t teach it in most business schools. We train people in business schools in the different disciplines. So much so that the professors, who are really good at their …

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John Latham, PHD

Organization Architect and Founder, Organization Design Studio™ a digital learning and applications lab that helps leaders learn how to design, build, and lead organizations that produce sustainable value for multiple stakeholders: investors, customers, employees, suppliers and partners, society, and the natural environment. Currently working at the confluence of systems thinking, organization design, and sustainable excellence. Read more